Last week I attended (half of) a brown bag about International Mother Language Day. I was kind of upset I didn’t find out earlier about it, because the half I could attend was incredibly interesting. I got to know more about Urdu and its conflicted history; I got to hear poems in languages that sounded so beautiful I didn’t even need to understand what they actually meant; finally, I got to think about my own mother language. 
In the past couple of weeks there has been a massive campaign (#dilloinitaliano) against the “Englishization” of Italian, a phenomenon that is rapidly infiltrating our language mainly through two backdoors: lazy, uneducated businessmen and bureaucrats who want to coat their usual mischiefs in a novel, exotic jargon that is supposed to sound innovative to people — following the eternal Italian curse that author Tomasi di Lampedusa proverbially describes as “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi” (if we want everything to stay the same, we have to change everything). People use more and more English words when they speak Italian, and it’s painful to hear: they do it because they can’t think of an Italian equivalent to express their thoughts, or because they think it sounds cool (as happens in Japan with katakana, apparently), but if you can’t speak your mother tongue there are good chances you’ll be awful at any other language… Which is why the people who indulge in this habit are usually also those who speak the worst English. Expressions like asap, audience, austerity, background, benchmark, benefit, brand, cash, customer care, deadline, engagement, fashion, feedback, gap, jobs act, like, mood, outfit, packaging, partnership, storytelling, teamwork, wellness are thus replacing the perfectly legitimate al più presto, pubblico, austerità, contesto, raffronto, beneficio, marchio, contante, servizio clienti, scadenza, coinvolgimento, moda, commento, divario, legge sul lavoro, mi piace, umore, abbigliamento, confezione, collaborazione, narrazione, lavoro di gruppo, benessere…
I am honestly surprised, and excited, by the attention this campaign has obtained on Italian media. Few foreigners know that Italy has a questione della lingua that started (at least) with Dante and was never really solved: Italy’s official language (if there ever were one) has been spoken for centuries only by literates and member of high society, while the people in different regions spoke dozens of very different dialects. Only with the advent of mass media we went beyond regional languages: one of the first TV programs post-WWII, Non è mai troppo tardi (It is never too late), starred an elementary school teacher who taught Italian to the millions of people who didn’t speak a word of it (and were often illiterate).
Today, according to the most recent data, more than 7 Italians out of 10 speak exclusively or predominantly Italian; 2 out of 10 switch between Italian and a local language (16% speak their local language at home); finally, “just” 5% of the population can only speak their local language. Many dialects face extinction, including mine (a version of Venetian): having been raised in the countryside, I am one of the very few young people who can still speak it, while many of my friends consider it a thing for peasants. For me, it was the only way I could comunicate with my grandparents and most adults from my hometown. In my family, Italian and dialect are both spoken; now that I think of it, the way we mix the two says a lot about who we are, what our roles and relationships are in the family, what were the different expectations from each sibling, and so much more… I’m sure studying the residual usages of dialects in Italy would be a goldmine for anyone interested in analyzing our changing society.
In the end, we managed to achieve a true national language, and even the most separatist political parties today seem to have moved their rhetoric outside national borders (now they want Italy out of Europe, rather than Northern Italy out of Italy). Many differences remain between regions, and many Italians are still alienated by the idea of an “Italian nation”; however, I believe the linguistic question has periodically caught fire in times of strengthened unity… This #dilloinitaliano campaign might, after all, be a good sign for Italy.